Will Netflix Go To $408 Or $480 After Earnings? Doesn't Matter To Me [View article]

Excellent strategy, Christian. Indeed ... IV tends to be overpriced and great to sell, even before real volatile periods like earnings announcements. These can be reasonably risked managed ... steady small gains and occasional bad losses still add up to profit.

Will Netflix Go To $408 Or $480 After Earnings? Doesn't Matter To Me [View article]

Buy this type of straddle (or Iron Condor) a "few" weeks ahead of earnings, and profit from (a) the run-up in implied volatility as earnings nears (reference the high cost of the straddle today compared to a "few" weeks ago), and/or (b) some surprise lucky move in the equity price BEFORE earnings are announced (your profits will be limited due to remaining Theta, but still, occasional big wins with this).

IV crash after earnings almost "always" makes it a better strategy to sell the Straddle (or even short an Iron Condor) just before earnings ... that would have been quite profitable today in NFLX. Too bad I slept in.

A 2L bottle of "plain seltzer", store brand, costs about $1.00 + plastic bottle deposit. Add onto that some transportation and storage cost for buying these on a regular basis. Call it $1.30 or $0.65/L. And if we count the real cost to the environment of plastic bottles (and the shipping from the factory to the store...) maybe $0.70/L.

I don't compare to the value of flavored sodas because these vary by soda brand, quality, amount of sugar, etc.. Frankly, I use my soda mostly unflavored or with a drop of juice or organic ginger.

I don't have the exact math around, but SodaStream using THEIR proprietary tank refills, is about $0.30/L. Someone that uses 4L of soda per week will saver, and thus, pay for their $80 machine in 1 year.

Using a paintball tank refill system brings the cost to $0.10/L or less, but some extra upfront cost to buy the adaptor and a tank or two.

The risk of "black-label" (generic) refills of any sort is rarely statistically significant. This certainly could be analyzed in detail and I'm sure you could poke dozens of hole in these analogies (as they have mitigating factors), but I believe that the realistic risk is plus or minus:

- The risk of voiding your vacuum cleaner warranty by using third-party bags.- The risk of skin problems from using Dollar Shave club blades instead of Gillette.- The risk of health problems from generic drugs vs. original label producer.- The risk of printer malfunction or poor color quality due to third-party inks.

CO2 is just a gas, and paintball fillers have no reason to skimp. They get their supplies from the SAME bulk suppliers that provide tanks to restaurant soda fountain machines (Mc Donalds, etc.).

To mitigate this risk, it is convenient in some areas to directly purchase from a beverage gas supplier; though they tend to have larger minimum quantities. Some people, therefore, rig up large external tanks to their SodaStreams.

Quite a large number of people are posting their success with paintball adaptors and refills. If serious problems start to arise, news will spread.

We all decide to save money in illogical ways. Quite frankly, partly we do this to "stick it to the man" for creating a proprietary refill system and overcharging for the underlying commodity refill.

Thus: The business opportunity is to sell "human consumption / beverage certified" CO2 refills for SodaStream at a compelling price in large quantities while still undercutting their proprietary refill pricing.

I certainly don't blame him for pulling back on his position (or even going short) -- he would be stupid not to take some money off the table: Paper gains are worth nothing should something unexpected occur.

I blame him for not REVEALING this and misleading interviewers with his "hasn't sold any shares" quote. It's BS.

Netflix owns a portion of the infrastructure; without going into technical details (I'm sure somebody can...), they actually cache content at various physical locations of the ISP connection points (offices of Comcast, Verizon, ATT, and I would suppose there are 3rd party owners of these bits of the internet who lease out the space and bandwidth).

The fact is that NFLX does not own the "last mile" of internet connectivity; that is subject to the cost and speed limitations set by the ISP's ... most of whom just also happen to be competing video content "channels" (Comcast, ATT, Verizon, and Google WiFi...).

The "channel" is king. If you own all the roads and bridges, then trucking companies (particularly, competitors) could be quickly put out of business if you so choose -- and if anti-trust laws are not enforced... in this case, "net neutrality".

ISP's may decide that they can make more money on slowing increasing bandwidth pricing (i.e., implementing speed and usage caps) and that encouraging Netflix usage is GOOD because it drives up demand for speed and usage...

Carl Icahn says he still hasn't "sold one share" of Netflix (NFLX), and that he has his son to thank for it. Talking at the Delivering Alpha conference, Icahn says he wanted to take profits $100/share ago, but backed off after his son (originally responsible for the investment) threatened to quit. Icahn, whose paper profits in Netflix top $1B, stated in May he came to support the streaming giant's management after meeting with Reed Hastings and catching an early viewing of House of Cards. (previous) [View news story]

How many puts has he bought? How many calls has he sold? There are plenty of ways for him to profit from a pullback in NFLX share price without "selling one share".